


Down The Garden Path

by GillianInOz



Series: Sweet Work [6]
Category: Lewis - Fandom
Genre: M/M, s4e1 Dead of Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-20 00:44:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12421515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillianInOz/pseuds/GillianInOz
Summary: While investigating a case at Crevecoeur Hall, James and Robbie realise they still have a few things to sort out if they want their relationship to last.





	Down The Garden Path

“You know these tours. Everybody too busy gawping to notice their fellow passengers.”

“I think I might notice, if there was a corpse sat next to me.”

“Here’s an itinerary, see if you can find out if anyone saw him along the way.”

James took the pamphlet and glanced through it. “Where will you be?”

“Tudor Crescent, Kidlington, home of Dr Stephen Black.” He paused in the doorway. “How was it? The trial?”

James snorted. “After all that, Zelinsky took a plea.”

“I know, I talked to Anderson at the CPS. She said it was your testimony that clinched it. His brief knew his only hope of leniency after that was a plea. I meant, how was it for you? Giving that testimony couldn’t have been easy.”

James just shrugged, looking down sightlessly at the glossy pages. He could feel Robbie’s eyes on him, but he didn’t want to think about the trial, let alone go over it again. 

“James,” Robbie began.

“You didn’t find her,” James said flatly.

“I know,” Robbie said gently. “But I’ve been where you are now. If you need to talk, you know I’m glad to listen.”

James avoided his gaze and Robbie sighed. “You’ll probably bump into Hooper and some of the other lads on your travels, there was a firearms incident at one of the staging posts this morning. Crevecoeur Hall.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “Crevecoeur. That rings a bell. Isn’t that where you used to live?”

James nodded, flipping through the pamphlet until he found the entry for the Hall. “Until my mother died,” he confirmed. “When I was twelve.”

“It’ll be a stroll down memory lane for you,” Robbie said. “That’s always fun.”

888

James actually felt his spirits lift a little as he walked down the drive towards Crevecoeur Hall. Re-Enactors were milling around, colourful costumes and banners waving in the breeze. Children ran by laughing and James smiled, clearly recalling running down this same drive with the other children of the estate, laughing and calling out in their games.

The house loomed against the blue sky, looking, if anything, even larger and more impressive to his adult eyes. He’d taken it for granted as a boy, this place, its grandeur, its solid magnificence. He’d been respectful, of course, he’d learned respect for his betters at his father’s knee, just as he’d learned his devout love of God at his mother’s. The two were inextricably entwined within him, here in this place.

James had crossed the lawn, past the ancient sundial, towards the rather modest front door, when a red car swept around the drive and a young woman climbed out. Of course, it would be her, today, here. Again his heart lifted, memories crowding him. 

Scarlett. So familiar, and yet so different. They chatted easily, and James was amazed at how little she seemed to have changed. He’d have known her anywhere. 

“I heard you’d married,” James said.

“We all make mistakes,” Scarlett said. “You?”

“Mistakes? Plenty.”

“Of the matrimonial variety?”

James smiled. “No,” he said. “I am with someone though. Coming up for three years now.” 

“But marriage isn’t in the cards?” Scarlett asked slyly.

“No,” James said, as his phone rang. “He’s a widower, not really keen on marrying again. Sorry,” he said, as he answered the phone.

Scarlett was staring at him, her head on one side, then she lifted her hand to her ear in the universal gesture for a phone. “Call me,” she said, walking away.

“I don’t have your number,” James called after her.

“You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”

888

“Coming back to mine?” Robbie invited.

James folded his freshly washed shirt over his arm. “No, thanks,” he said, smiling to show he appreciated the invitation. “I wouldn’t be fit company tonight, I’m exhausted.”

“Well, you’ve had a long day, with the trial and everything.” Robbie looked uncertain for a moment. “You know, James,” he began, just as James also spoke.

“I better get going.” They looked at each other awkwardly, and then they both covered the moment with a rueful smile. “Night,” James said, and he walked away.

888

An hour later he sat in front of the computer at work, his fresh shirt hanging from the notice board behind him. He stared at the screen, his mobile in his hand. Scarlett’s home address and phone number stared back at him. 

It couldn’t hurt, could it? Touching base with an old childhood friend? Scarlett was engaged, he was in a committed relationship. Surely there wasn’t a hint of impropriety in them just meeting for a drink or a meal?

But they had an ongoing murder case and Scarlett had to be considered a suspect. James had sailed close to the wind on a case before, and it had almost cost his and Robbie’s lives, that wasn’t a mistake he wanted to make again. So he logged out of his computer and went home.

Although not before he’d programmed Scarlett’s number into his phone.

888

Next morning it was a nightmare at Lodge Farm. A father dead, his daughter shocked and grieving. It all struck a little bit too close to home, literally. Sitting in the room where he’d sat with his family, seeing the devastated grief in Briony’s eyes was hard enough. But to then be confronted with the physical scars on her forearm, some old and faded, some fresh and new, was just too much. All of a sudden James couldn’t bear to be in that room, in that house a moment longer. He stalked out and straight into Detective Constable Hooper.

“Hey?” Robbie said as Hooper walked away, and James swung on him. 

“You do realise what’s going on there?” James snapped. 

“I’ve got eyes,” Robbie said. “But that’s not an excuse for you to go dishing it out to the troops.”

James looked away.

“Come on, what’s up?”

“Nothing,”James said flatly.”I’m fine. Really,” he said, when Robbie just stared at him.

“The hell you are,” Robbie muttered as he walked away. 

888

There was a stone wall set back in a copse of trees, and James found it without consciously looking, as if his feet led him automatically to the place he used to sit and brood. Only a fragment of the low stone wall remained, as old as Crevecoeur itself, if not older. James sat down and lit up a smoke, surveying the view through the trees. The late afternoon sun was painting the sky in improbable shades of pink and gold.

James drew deep on his cigarette, although he already knew the nicotine hit wouldn’t ease the constant ache he carried around in his chest these days.

“Sorry about this morning,” he said around the smoke. 

Robbie joined him on the stone wall with a sigh. “Lot of memories in this place,” he said gently.

“It’s not just this place,” James said, rubbing at his tired eyes. “The Zelinsky case, the trial, its all been eating away at me. This past week, working with the CPS every day. Hammering out my testimony, going over and over it.” James shook his head. “It’s almost worse now than it was when I found her.”

“The mind has ways of protecting itself. After you found her we had to find him, and then we had to break him, get what we needed to charge him.” Robbie paused, rubbing the back of his neck wearily. “You know you can come to me, don’t you? For anything?”

“I just need to be alone right now.”

James couldn’t miss the hurt that flickered over Robbie’s face before he looked away, but he didn’t know what he could say to make it better. He should have been able to go to his lover when he was hurting, he’d woken up enough times in the night and reached for the phone, or his car keys. 

But the longer he waited the harder it got, the more he felt the distance between them that seemed to be getting wider every day. He sighed and stubbed out his cigarette on the wall. He remembered his portable ashtray and pulled it out of his pocket, dropping the stub inside and clicking the enamelled lid closed.

James rubbed a finger over the smooth surface, the golden Cambridge lion gleaming gold and black. “What is it about Richardson as the killer that doesn’t work for you?” he asked slowly. “SOCO has confirmed traces of Black’s blood in his car, and taken together with the letters we found at Black’s house, it all seems pretty conclusive. What exactly is bothering you?”

Robbie glanced at him, his expression back to normal “I just don’t buy it. It’s all too convenient. Black coming here, the letters, the suicide. Richardson abandoning his daughter.”

James nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe there is something else going on. I think Scarlett knows something. She’s made it a point to bump into me a few times, and she’s pretty keen on us going out tonight. I think she wants to find out what I know about the case.”

Robbie frowned. “Tonight? Her fiancé just arrived today, and she wants to go out with you tonight?”

“Yes, that’s one odd thing. Another is that I’m pretty sure she followed me to the bookstore at lunchtime. Who buys a book to look up a line in a poem? That’s what Google is for.”

“Maybe she just wants a last fling before she ties the knot,” Robbie said, a bit snidely. “You should have told her you were gay, that might have put her off.”

James felt a jolt of the anger that seemed to be seething just under the surface with him these days. He stood up, dusting off the seat of his pants. “I did tell her I was gay,” he said shortly. “I also told her I was in a long term, committed relationship.” 

Robbie stood up too, contrition on his face. “James,” he began.

“I think she wants information from me,” James said coolly. “So I’m going to accept her invitation.” He walked away.

“James, don’t go like this,” Robbie said from behind him. “I’m sorry.”

James shook his head and kept walking. He heard Robbie swear under his breath, but James didn’t stop and Robbie didn’t follow. 

888

“So,” Scarlett said. “Tell me about this boyfriend of yours.”

Despite the lingering traces of annoyance, James had to smile at the idea of Robbie being called his boyfriend. “He’s not a boy,” James said. “He’s a bit older than me, actually.”

“And a widower? So he was married before? To a woman?”

“For twenty years. He has grown up kids.”

Scarlett looked fascinated. “Wow. I actually find it easier to picture you as a priest than gay.”

Now James laughed. “So did I, for a while.”

“Technically you have been married though, do you remember?” Scarlett said, smirking. “I was about eight.”

The memory clicked into place and James chuckled. “The Danvers sisters were bridesmaids,” he recalled. 

“They were happy days,” Scarlett said, a bit wistfully.

“That’s what Paul said,” James recalled, and then sharpened his attention as a flash of fear crossed Scarlett’s face.

“Paul?” she said casually, reaching for her drink. Her fingers trembled a little as she lifted the elegant flute and sipped. 

“Almost his exact words,” James said, watching her closely. 

888

‘Will you come in?” Scarlett said at her front door.

“We’re both otherwise engaged,” James said, taking her hand and looking down at her ring. “Do you love him?”

Scarlett pulled her hand from his, looking away.

“Why then?” James asked, really wanting to know.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, kissing his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Scarlett,” James said, and she swung on him.

“He’s rich. When daddy’s bank… We didn’t come out of it quite as unscathed as people like to think. Tariq’s father helped out financially.”

James shook his head in disbelief. It was like something from the Dark Ages.

“There was an understanding,” Scarlett continued. “Quid pro quo. There, now you can hate me.”

“Don’t do it,” James said, stepping closer. 

“I have no choice,” Scarlett said shortly. 

It came to James, the poem she’d spoken of earlier, when they’d met in the bookshop. The poem that Scarlett had claimed she’d been so desperate to reread.

_“Into my heart an air that kills_  
_From yon far country blows:_  
_What are those blue remembered hills,_  
_What spires, what farms are those?_

_That is the land of lost content,_  
_I see it shining plain,_  
_The happy highways where I went_  
_And cannot come again.”_

Scarlett was frozen in the doorway, key still in the lock. 

“This is your life, Scarlett. Not a commodity to be traded for your family’s sake. Believe me, I know. I almost gave my life into a calling I didn’t want or need, out of sheer desperation to hide from who I was.”

“I’m not like you, James,” Scarlett said. “I’ve always known who and what I am. I’m a Mortmaigne, and I’ll do what we Mortmaigne’s always do. Whatever we have to to get by.” She turned, slipped her arms around his neck. “Stay with me tonight, James. Just you and me. Tomorrow we can go back to our real lives.”

She kissed him, pressing her soft, fragrant warmth against him. It had been so long since he’d held a woman, so long since he’d wanted to, or even thought about it. And it was so different from being in Robbie’s arms. Robbie’s strong arms, his firm hands, Robbie’s lips on his.

“Scarlett.” James turned his head, gently taking her forearms and pushing her away from him. “Please don’t.” 

“You want to,” Scarlet said, leaning back into his arms. “I can feel you want to.”

“No,” James said, stepping back. He looked at her, standing in the moonlight, her hair tousled, her lips soft with kisses. How he’d idolised her when they were younger. She’d been a princess, a queen, Marion to his Robin Hood. In every childhood game Scarlet had been the centre he’d revolved around, and seeing her had rekindled that old, innocent adoration.

But he wasn’t that boy any more, he’d been through ice and fire to become the man he was today. He knew what he wanted, and it was light years away from anything Scarlett was offering. 

“No,” he said again, gently. “I like my real life. I don’t need to forget it.”

Scarlet stepped away, pushing her hair back in a careless, studied gesture. “My mistake,” she said coolly. “I just wanted a bit of fun before I did my duty by my family.” She nodded at him genteelly. “Looks like I picked the wrong _man_.” 

James watched her turn the key in her lock and close the door firmly in his face. 

888

Robbie opened the door and looked at him for long moments before stepping back. “Lost your key?”

“Wasn’t sure I’d be welcome,” James said.

Robbie closed the door behind him with a sharp bang. “You don’t usually say stupid things, James,” he said angrily. “But that’s a pretty bloody stupid thing you just said.” He stomped down the short hall and into his kitchen. “If you want coffee make it yourself. I’m having a beer.”

James stood in the doorway and watched Robbie grab his beer and lean against the counter while he twisted off the lid.

“I wanted to apologise,” Robbie said, voice tight. “But now I’m too pissed off to.”

“Don’t you want to know how my date went?”

Robbie glared at him. “Are you trying to make me angry?” Something came and went on his face so fast James almost missed it. “Are you trying to break up with me?”

“Is that what you want?” James asked quietly.

Robbie slammed the beer bottle down on the counter and stalked towards him. “Don’t play games with me, I’m not a suspect. Look, I’m sorry I said what I did, okay? I acted like a jealous idiot, and I have no excuse for it.”

“I’ve never given you cause to doubt me,” James said.

“Haven’t you?” Robbie said sharply. “What’s this last week been? We’re supposed to be in love, we’re supposed to be sharing our lives, and all you’ve done since you started prepping for the trial is shut me out.”

“I needed some time and space,” James said. 

“Time away from me. Space from me,” Robbie said, his voice bitter. 

“Yes,” James admitted. 

Robbie stared at him, hurt and anguish on his face. “So you are breaking up with me.”

“No,” James said. “I don’t want that. And I can see you don’t want that either.”

Robbie looked relieved for a moment, and then frowned. “Then what is it? What’s happening? How do I know what’s going on if you keep shutting me out?”

“I needed time to think,” James said. “I love you. I love us.” He took a deep breath. “But you have to admit, lately there’s been a distance between us.”

“If there is you’ve put it there,” Robbie said, walking past him into the lounge room. 

“This is part of what I’m talking about,” James said wearily. “You know what I mean, but you just take charge, shut me down. I want us to be equals,” he said, a little desperately.

Robbie stared at him. “What? We are equals. What are you talking about?”

James shook his head. “Sometimes it’s like what we are at work bleeds into our personal life. Even the way you always say you want me to make the decisions, set the pace.”

“That’s for your sake,” Robbie interrupted. “So you never feel as if I’ve pressured you into something you don’t want.”

“For god’s sake,” James said, exasperated. “Aren’t we beyond that now? Do you even get how patronising that is?”

Robbie blinked at him. “Patronising? Is that how I sound?” He shook his head, looking bewildered. “I never meant to… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, James.”

James sighed. “I don’t want you to apologise.I know you don’t do it to hurt me. And at first maybe you were right, it was what I needed.”

Robbie just stared at him, still looking stunned.

“But if our relationship doesn’t grow it’s not going to last,” James said, and even as he said it he knew that this was what had been eating at him over the last few weeks. The sense that something was out of kilter with them, that there was something he’d been reaching for and not finding.

“The Zelinsky case is not why I’ve been stepping back,” James said. “It’s just made me realise that there’s something wrong. This inequality I feel, it’s because there’s a distance between us. Yes, there is,” he insisted when Robbie shook his head. “And you’re the one who’s put it there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Robbie said, but he looked away, his eyes not meeting James’s gaze. 

“Please, Robbie,” James whispered. “Please.” 

Robbie sighed, looking suddenly old and tired. “I didn’t mean to put any distance between us,” he said heavily. “And I certainly didn’t want to make you feel as if you’re any less than equal in our relationship. But… But I do worry sometimes.”

“Worry about what?”

“That I’m being selfish,” Robbie confessed. “That I was being selfish the first time I gave in to my impulse and kissed you in the moonlight.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes wearily. 

James frowned. “Selfish?”

“I’m twenty five years older than you, James. You’re a man in his prime, you need someone your own age, who can keep pace with you through the years ahead. Not an old man whose life is winding down.”

“You’re fifty six, Robbie. Not eighty six.”

“You know what I mean.” 

“And when you are eighty six, I’ll be sixty one,” James said. “I don’t care about that.”

“I do,” Robbie said simply. “You wanted to know why I keep that distance there, well, this is why.”

“Is it that you think you’re too old for me,” James asked, trying to understand. “Or that I’m too young for you?”

“Laura asked me the same thing,” Robbie said. “That day I told her about you and me.”

“Why would she ask that?”

Robbie looked a little uncomfortable. “I might have said then that I was a bit worried about the age difference between us.”

James’s felt a flare of pain. “You could say that to her but not to me?”

“I didn’t even know I was going to say it,” Robbie confessed. “I’m generally not very good at talking about my feelings.”

“And still you’re a hundred times better at it than me,” James admitted. “The wonder is we ever got together at all.” They stood in silence for a few minutes, and James could feel it again, that distance yawning between them where once they’d been so close.

“We need to fix this,” Robbie said, his voice shaking. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

James shook his head. “And I don’t know how I can get you to accept that the years between us don’t matter to me, Robbie. I may not have your experiences, but I’m not some immature kid you seduced. I think some part of you still feels as if that’s what you did.”

Robbie opened his mouth as if to argue, then subsided, looking guilty. “Shit,” he said. 

“You had this whole life before we met,” James said gently. “Experiences I’ll never have. And yes this is my first real relationship. But we’ve been making it work, haven’t we?”

“I think maybe you’re better at it than me now,” Robbie said ruefully. “Which is so bloody typical of you. You’re the one who’s seen we’ve taken a wrong path along the way. That I’ve led us on the wrong path,” he said sighing and sitting down on the couch. 

James dropped down in the chair opposite him. “We can fix this,” he said. “I needed time and distance to think, to work out what was wrong, but I’m not letting you go. I’ll fight to keep you, to keep us. We’re worth fighting for.”

“Do you...” Robbie, hesitated. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s someone your own age out there for you. And that if you hadn’t been with me you might have found them.”

“If I hadn’t been with you?” James said, frowning. “You mean if we hadn’t been lovers?”

Robbie nodded.

“You don’t know, do you?” James said, amazed. “You think I fell in love with you because we had sex?”

“Well,” Robbie said, shrugging. 

“The sex opened the door, Robbie, the sex made it easy, but that isn’t why I fell in love with you. You did something that night that I never would have. Never could have. And because you did, this thing between us was given a chance to flourish. But if you hadn’t…” James shook his head, his heart hurting at the thought. “I still would have fallen in love with you. I was halfway there already. And I can’t even imagine how miserable I would have been, loving you and being unable to do anything about it.”

“You think you still would have fallen in love with me?” Robbie asked disbelievingly. “If we hadn’t become lovers first?”

“Of course I would,” James said, heartfelt. He gestured, trying to encompass himself and Robbie and the room and their whole lives in one sweeping move. “Of course I still would have loved you. Of course.”

“You mean that?” Robbie said, stunned. “You really mean that.”

James looked at him steadily, trying to convey the truth with his gaze. “If I wasn’t with you I’d be alone,” he said. “You saved me from that. You saved us, when you were courageous enough to reach out for what you wanted.”

James reached out his hand now and Robbie took it in his, linking them across the distance between them.

“Don’t stop being courageous now, Robbie. It takes bravery to make a relationship work. Be brave.”

Robbie gripped his hand hard and James stood, closing the distance between them, sitting down next to him.

“You’re going to be in the prime of your life,” Robbie said painfully. “And I’m going to be an old man.” He looked down at their hands and James followed his gaze, seeing what Robbie saw. Old, creased skin, a few age spots, slightly swollen knuckles. Cradling his own young, smooth fingers.

James lifted their linked hands and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of each of Robbie’s. “I don’t care,” he said simply.

Robbie’s eyes grew wet. “One day you will,” he said, voice thickening. “When I die and leave you to face your old age alone.”

And this was it, James realised. This was the heart of it all.

“So you’d rather I was alone now than face a future without you?” he asked gently. “Because I would be,” he said when Robbie shook his head. “There’s no mythical tall, dark stranger waiting out there. There’s only you.” James took a breath, knowing his next words would hurt Robbie, unable to spare him.

“You were supposed to grow old with Val,” he said, tightening his hands when Robbie’s jerked in his grip. “And you were cheated out of that. If you’d known that you were going to lose her, would you go back and erase those years?”

Robbie stared at him, a kind of horrified realisation dawning on his face.

“One day, if nature takes its course,” James said carefully. “You’ll die before I do, and I’ll be alone. But I’ll have had the best years of my life with the man I love with all my heart. And that’s more than most people in the world will ever have. Would you take that away from me? From us?”

Robbie’s face crumpled and his tears spilled over. “I’ve been a bloody fool, haven’t I? Pulling you close with one hand, and pushing you away with the other.” 

James wrapped his arms around him, and Robbie clutched him, burying his head in his neck.

“I think it’s been easier for you to treat me like I was still that inexperienced young man you kissed in the moonlight - to keep that distance between us - than accept our relationship was maturing,” James said, rubbing his back. “So yeah, a bit of a bloody fool.”

Robbie huffed a laugh. “It’s a fair cop,” he managed.

“There’s no one else for me, love,” James promised him. “You chose to lead me down that garden path, and now I’ve chosen you. Forsaking all others. As long as we both live.”

Robbie gasped a breath against his throat, and then another, and James held him as tightly as he could as Robbie gave in to some of the fear and worry that he’d been hiding so deeply.

“You know,” James murmured, a little while later. “My friends used to tell me I had a middle aged soul.” 

“You had rotten friends, love,” Robbie said, sniffing and rubbing his wet eyes on James’s shoulder. 

James huffed a laugh. “But they were right. I never fit in with people my own age, not even when I was a kid. But I fit with you.”

“We fit together,” Robbie said. “Right from the off. Even when I was still that bitter sod who walked off the plane that day, we fit.”

“Then that’s what we need to concentrate on,” James said. 

888

Later, when the case was over, and both Robbie and James’s instincts were proved right, James stood on the lawn of Crevecoeur Hall, looking at the sad remnants of a party celebrating an engagement that would now never end in marriage. 

Robbie joined him and James slanted him a sympathetic glance. Robbie looked shaken after his arrest of Augustus Mortmaigne, and James felt a twinge of guilt that he’d used the excuse of his gunshot wound to beg off that encounter. He just hadn’t been able to bear being in the same room with the man who had ruined so many lives with his criminal weakness.

“I shook his hand,” James murmured. “He remembered me, my name at least. Well, he would, I suppose. My father had worked here for thirty years.”

Robbie turned to look at him, but James kept his eyes on the fluttering white marquee. 

“And then he complimented me on being a policeman. Said my parents must be so proud. My mother died while we lived on this estate,” James said bitterly. “The first time we knew she was sick was when she collapsed out here on this lawn. We’d meant so little to him that he’d completely forgotten us all but our names.”

“He’s a selfish old monster,” Robbie said thickly. “James? When you were a boy. He didn’t?”

James turned and grasped his forearm, squeezing reassurance. “No,” he said firmly. “Christ no. Do you think I could have come back here and shaken his hand if he had?”

Robbie searched his face and then sighed, his shoulders relaxing, colour coming back to his face. “Scared the shit out of me,” he muttered. “Ever since I twigged as to what was going on.”

“Poor Robbie,” James said tenderly. “You’ve had a pretty rotten week of it all round, haven’t you?”

“You’re the one who got shot,” Robbie pointed out. “You’re the one who was dragged down memory lane, and all that on top of the worst case of your career.”

James just looked at him, still quirking a smile.

“But yeah,” Robbie admitted. “I’ve had a bloody sodding buggery of a week. Made worse by so much of it turning out to be my fault.”

James squeezed his arm once more before letting go. “You didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. “And now we know the problem we can fix it.”

“Ah, the confidence of youth,” Robbie said, then raised his brows. “Am I allowed to say that now?”

James chuckled. “Yes, you can mention my youth.”

They turned and ambled along the path.

“Can I still feel chuffed that I’m the only bloke you’ll ever shag?” Robbie asked in a conversational tone.

“If you must,” James conceded, hiding a grin.

“Can I still worship at the altar of your young, beautiful body?”

James snorted a laugh, covering his eyes with his hand and shaking his head. “I suppose I can bear it,” he managed. 

“And you’ll tell me if I screw up again?”

James nudged his shoulder as they strolled. “If you do the same for me.”

Robbie took a deep breath of the fresh morning air and sighed contentedly. “Then we’ll be fine,” he predicted.

James glanced at his face and smiled, his heart easy in his chest. “I think so too,” he agreed.


End file.
